Transcript of Interview With Ahmadinejad Aide Mojtaba Samareh Hashemihttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061803823_pf.html
Thursday, June 18, 2009 8:29 PM
Transcript of an interview with Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, trusted aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, June 18, 2009, in his office in Tehran. The interview was translated by The Washington Post.
Q: Why has there been fraud reported?
A: In the name of God. I think there are a few reasons for these allegations.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government was more productive than other governments that preceded him. Almost all of the people of the nation in cities and villages benefited from his government’s actions. Anyone you ask can list a number of things that benefited them from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government; whether it was urban, regional or nationwide . . . Universities were expanded and all villagers got health insurance. Many urban issues were resolved, especially issues pertaining to the urbanization of areas around major cities by farmers and villagers. Agricultural output increased to a surprising amount. For instance, agricultural output surpassed one hundred million tons. The ratio of exports to imports increased even ahead of the five year plan.
People felt that there’s no distance between them and the government. A lot of time was spent on studying people’s problems. All these actions [by the government] attracted people to this government to a point where many of the people who were Mr. Ahmadinejad’s opponents were unaware of this attraction.
The vote difference was so great that many opponents were shocked. Some interesting things happened in areas that were traditionally against this government.
For instance, in Kerman province, which is a rather leftist area that leans towards Mr. Hashemi, the turnout was high and the percentage of votes that went to Mr. Ahmadinejad was high. 87 percent voted, of which 78 percent voted for Mr. Ahmadinejad. The reason for this is that many infrastructure projects were carried out in this region. In the past, southern Kerman had been forgotten but in this government a committee was formed to address the issues of this region. The head of this committee was the first minister of the president.
This caused the region to grow and advance to a great degree. In Southern Khorason, Northern Khorasan, and Khorasan Razavi; or even in apparently better developed provinces like Mazandaran the participation of the people was high in the elections, and the percentage of votes that went to Mr. Ahmadinejad were high. These were all reasons. To sum it up, the opponents’ lack of knowledge about people feelings and reactions to the government’s services and actions was the reason [why fraud was reported.]
The second reason was because Mr. Ahmadinejad’s opponents’ set up their main base in the city of Tehran. Some of their supporters thought the rest of the nation is like the area they live in. Although, Mr. Ahmadinejad had the majority vote in the province of Tehran. It was higher than Mr. Mousavi’s vote as well.
Another reason had to with the propaganda campaign and psychological war the opponents had launched. The opponents themselves fell into the trap of these campaigns.
As you see today, aside from a couple of cities in the Tehran province and three or four cities nations wide [in total], the rest of the nation don’t have a problem with the result.
The people accept the results and didn’t expect anything but this result.
. . . That foreign interference, such as the interference of the U.S. and some European nations [played a role.] They tried to reinforce the differences. They even supported the street unrest. They even called it a democratic event.
Q: You don’t think it is a democratic action?
A: A protest that has a permit and is not destructive to the public is a democratic action. But unfortunately, some western governments supported unrest and hooliganism.

Q: How did they do that?
A: With their propaganda and vocal support for unrest and hooliganism; and by calling them a democratic action.
Q: You said the opposition got trapped in their own psychological game. Can you give some examples of these psychological games?
A: They said from the very beginning that they were victorious even though international bodies, including neutral organizations showed that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s votes were more.
They created high expectations amongst their supporters and guaranteed them victory. And once they saw that they weren’t victorious they claimed there was fraud. In reality, they set up their own supporters in their own propaganda trap.
Now they have no way out but to say that there was fraud despite the fact that all candidates had their representatives present at the ballots. [They had representatives] from the beginning of the voting day until the end of the count in every part of the country, including in the ministry of supervision over the elections. Up to this point, they haven’t provided any proof that there has been fraud. They’ve only claimed there was fraud.
Q: They say that the representatives weren’t allowed at several sites and claimed that text messaging was down on the day of the elections. Can you elaborate?
A: In the entire country there were about 46,000 polling places. The candidates didn’t introduce that many representatives. They introduced less, and some didn’t appear on Election Day. But all those who had cards and permission were able to be present . . . I can even tell you that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s representatives were less than those of Mr. Mousavi. In Tehran alone we didn’t have representatives at 500 polling places. And some of those we introduced didn’t show up.

It’s natural for five to ten percent of the candidates [representatives] not to be able to show up. But all candidates had mobile representatives. They could have checked some of the polling places they didn’t have representatives at with these mobile ones.
And you know, the elections in Iran are carried out by the general public. Meaning, those who are present at the boxes on Election Day are locals or teachers. Who ever is trustworthy is allowed to carry out the elections. And usually these people are the same for every election. Every polling place has an executive, a provincial representative, two secretaries, and a representative from the supervisory council who all carry out the elections. And every polling place had three or four people who were representatives of the candidates.
The inspectors of the interior ministry also checked out polling sites. Nearly 250,000 people take part in the entire presidential elections. And there’s room for about 150,000 representatives from the candidates at elections but less than that number were present this time.
Even some candidates introduced less than allowed representatives to inspect the elections themselves; like Mr. Karubi and Mr. Rezaee.
In total, in the entire nation there are some one million people who carry out everything related to the elections; people like supervisors, guards, representatives of the candidates and such. The Iranian elections aren’t a place where fraud can be carried out.
There’s been an election every year in the past 30 years and we’ve gained experience in carrying out elections. Nobody can interfere in the Iranian elections.
Q: The opposition is calling for the elections to be void. Do you think this will be carried out?
A: So we need to tell 85% of the people that they made a mistake by voting? This will never happen. It’s an insult to the people’s presence at the boxes.

Q: So it’ll never happen that these elections will be declared by the guardian’s council as cancelled?
A: Yes, because, there’s no reason for it to be cancelled. As far as I know, there hasn’t been any proof of fraud reported. Some boxes maybe recounted but the difference between votes is so high that I doubt the elections would be cancelled all together.
Q: You don’t think or you’re sure?
A: I said I don’t think. This is my opinion but it’s up to the guardian council.
Q: Did you see the images of the people on the streets?
A: I’ve seen the people themselves.
Q: So you’ve seen your own supporters but have you seen the supporters of Mr. Mousavi?
A: Yes I’ve seen them too.
Q: What do you think about them?
A: You have to look at the votes. Imagine of 24 million people. The victory Mr. Ahmadinejad celebrated was for the nation and not for him. 40 million people took part in the elections. This was very important and the celebration was for the people.
Q: How will this be solved? There are people protesting on the streets every day. I’ve never seen this in Iran. How are you going to satisfy the people?
A: I think with clarification and further explanation and by taking legal action against those who create unrest and damage public spaces. Nobody is happy with this. Not Mr. Mousavi’s supporters and not supporters from other candidates.
I’m worried about some western nations, including the United States, regretting this like the nuclear case. For years they falsely accused us in the nuclear case. Recently they’ve been admitting that using peaceful nuclear technology is Iran’s right. They realized their mistake very late in that case.
I hope in the case of the elections they realize their interference is a mistake and that they don’t repeat this mistake. They’ll certainly regret this. Then they’ll have problems reestablishing their relations with Iran. Then their list of violations against Iran will grow longer.
Q: Meaning if the U.S. continues their interference in Iranian domestic politics you might retract your offer to talk to the U.S. administration?
A: It’ll make things harder. When they’re taking about establishing trust, they need to take steps to gain Iran’s trust and not steps to demolish Iranian trust.
The more this atmosphere of distrust is reinforced the more difficult it will become to establish future relations and it would prove that they only claim they want to establish relations with Iran and that they want to shake Iran’s hand.
Mr. Obama is following Mr. Bush’s path. Changing the rhetoric will not solve the problem. Our nation is experienced and wise and looks at the actions of the nations and not their claims.
All the communication channels with Iran and the U.S. have been incorrect. They always us sources [of information] that are against Iran to get information about Iran. They interpret issues pertaining to Iran based on their own mentality towards Iran.
Q: Of course they make a mistake because they only see Tehran and not the entire nation?
A: That’s one of their mistakes.
Q: Were the Americans talking to people around Mr. Hashemi about relations?
A: You need to ask the American government or those around Mr. Hashemi.

Q: The middle class people, who are a large number, are dissatisfied with this government. You have been going to the provinces and helped the people there we’ve seen this in your trip to Semnan; how are you going to accommodate the problems of the middle class people who are clearly not satisfied with your government?
A: I don’t accept your interpretation. If we’re talking about a minority of the middle class, you might be right. But most people are happy from all classes.
Their large presence at the voting polls and the fact that the majority vote went for Mr. Ahmadinejad proves my point. Of course our government only had four years to work. Any government that comes to power needs more time to reach its goals. We think we’ll take further steps in the coming four years. Especially in issues pertaining to the economy, even though we’re doing better than many other countries, including the United States. The international downturn didn’t affect us as much as it affected other countries.